Diversity in streaming film in sharp decline across all roles, report finds

Key Points

• A new report from UCLA’s Entertainment & Media Research Initiative has found a sharp decline in diversity among all roles in streaming movies.

• The “2026 Hollywood Diversity Report: Part 2, Streaming Film” shows that BIPOC professionals in acting, directing, and writing roles dropped by as much as 15 percent from 2024 to 2025.

• White men were also the most likely to hold key roles on big-budget streaming films, while only one streaming film budgeted at $100 million or above featured women of color in leading roles.

A new study reports worrying findings for the future of diversity in Hollywood.

Published Wednesday, the UCLA Entertainment & Media Research Initiative’s “2026 Hollywood Diversity Report: Part 2, Streaming Film” leads with the startling conclusion that the share of BIPOC (Black, indigenous, and people of color) film professionals across all key roles in streaming film dropped sharply from 2024 to 2025.

From lead roles to ensemble parts to directors and writers, some roles saw declines in representation as steep as 15 percent over the course of a single year. As the BIPOC share of the U.S. population grows by roughly half a percent each year, with a BIPOC majority forecasted within the next two decades, and as BIPOC households remain overrepresented as viewers of streaming films (compared to their population share), white film professionals are overtaking roles held mere months ago by their nonwhite counterparts.

A project of the school’s Institute for Research on Labor and Employment, this year’s edition of the annual report was authored by Dr. Ana-Christina Ramón, Dr. Michael Tran, Jade Abston, Nico Garcia, and Dr. Darnell Hunt, with Jade Abston, Nico Garcia, Michelle Risacher, and Kyla Yein contributing to data collection.

The wide-ranging report examined all 89 English-language films made for streaming that were released last year, with information about viewership, budgets, hiring, and more coming from the Studio System, Luminate Film & TV, IMDb, Nielsen, and Talkwalker.

The topline takeaways from the report are eye-opening. While BIPOC creatives have achieved proportionate representation (43.1 percent) among total actors, they stand at 36 percent of the total share of streaming film leads, 31.5 percent of streaming film directors, and just 21.3 percent of streaming film writers.

The significance of these figures comes into relief when measured against the findings from 2024’s report.

Among streaming film leads, only Black actors and actors of Middle Eastern and North African descent (MENA) met or exceeded their population share in 2025. Every other group, including Latinx, Asian, multiracial, and Indigenous actors were underrepresented. That last group went completely unrepresented last year in streaming film. Overall, the share of BIPOC leads in streaming film dropped from 51 percent in 2024 to 36 percent in 2025.

Factoring in budgets, and the numbers look even more grim. White men were the least likely to star (45.9 percent) in films in the lowest budget range (less than $10 million), while only one film in the highest budget range ($100 million and over) featured women of color in leading roles. That film was KPop Demon Hunters, which also stands out as the only film in the top 20 most-watched streaming films of the year directed by a woman of color.

Looking at full casts, 2025’s report showed that 41 percent of all streaming films in 2024 featured majority BIPOC casts. That number fell to 25.8 percent in 2025. As the report’s authors note, “The rollback in diversity is reminiscent of what happened to theatrical films in 2024. It appears that there was, in fact, an industry-wide chilling effect that spread to streaming films a year later in 2025.”

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It was the same with directors and writers. In the former camp, every BIPOC group save Latinx filmmakers lost ground from 2024 to 2025, dropping from 41 percent of all streaming films directed by a BIPOC creative to 31.5 percent. Where regards writers, Indigenous screenwriters and screenwriters of MENA descent were entirely absent from the 20 most watched, while the total share of BIPOC writers on streaming films fell from 30 percent to 21.3 percent.

Netflix dominated the streaming film charts in 2025, distributing all but three of the 20 most-watched titles. Of those 17, eight had a BIPOC lead, while just four had a BIPOC cast share of 50 percent or above.

Hollywood has certainly made strides when it comes to diversity in front of and behind the camera, but the road ahead remains long.

Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly